Re-writing ‘Woman’: New Woman Hybridity in Araki Iku’s “The Letter” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Turned”

Authors

  • Carrie Khou Universität Mannheim

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.145

Abstract

Turn-of-the-century (1890-1920) short fiction in Japan and the United States portrays the New Woman as a figure of hybridization subverting the legitimacy of binary gender codes. This article outlines how Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “Turned“ and Araki Iku’s “The Letter“ exemplify and interrogate the hybrid nature of the New Woman concept. The concept of hybridity serves to reveal female identity as negotiable and permeable, simultaneously disclosing the New Woman as a transnational figure, which enables a broad set of cultural interpretations.

Author Biography

Carrie Khou, Universität Mannheim

Carrie Khou is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant at the University of Mannheim. She teaches classes about American short fiction, film studies, cultural translation, contemporary fiction of the financial crisis (2008), and the New Woman in modern American literature. During her studies she attended the University of Mannheim, the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Currently, she is working on her doctoral thesis titled “Re-Writing ‘Woman’: the American New Woman in Short Fiction of Japan, Korea, and China.“

Downloads

Published

2012-05-10

How to Cite

Khou, Carrie. “Re-Writing ‘Woman’: New Woman Hybridity in Araki Iku’s “The Letter” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘Turned’”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 13, May 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.145.

Issue

Vol. 13 (2012)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.